The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the US Department of Health worries doctors, industry experts and scientists, who fear an “earthquake” in American public health due to the anti-vax theories and anti-scientific he has thus spread. far away

“It is a health hazard to our country. It shouldn’t even be allowed in the Department of Health building, let alone be in charge of it,” says Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen.

“The bungling of public health policy during the pandemic under Donald Trump has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. With Kennedy Jr., Trump is courting another politically driven public health disaster,” Weissman said.

Rfk Jr “is a terrible choice. He has no medical training. He is against vaccines and spreads false information. The last time he intervened in the medical affairs of the state, 83 children died of measles” , said Alexander McAlpine, a pediatrician at his hospital in British Columbia, referring to the 2018 incident in which two Samoan children died after nurses mistakenly mixed measles and rubella vaccine with a muscle relaxant that ‘ gone instead of water.

The Samoan government had temporarily suspended vaccinations and Kennedy Jr had taken advantage of the incident to ban vaccinations. His campaign caused vaccination rates to drop, and the next year a measles outbreak on the island killed 83 people, including children.

Shares of vaccine manufacturers fell

And indeed, shares of vaccine producers fell on Thursday, when President-elect Donald Trump called the anti-vaxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health.

Moderna shares closed more than 5% lower, Novavax shares fell more than 7% and Pfizer shares lost more than 2%. Shares of BioNTech, the German pharmaceutical company that helped develop an anti-Covid vaccine with Pfizer, fell more than 6% at the end of the session. British drugmaker GSK, which makes flu and many other vaccines, closed about 2%.

Penny opinion: ‘RFK is pro-abortion, Senate should reject his nomination’

Former vice president Mike Pence opposes Rfk Jr’s nomination for health care, because of his positions on abortion. “I believe that the nomination of RFK Jr. represents a sudden departure from our administration’s pro-life path and should be deeply troubling to the millions of pro-life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our candidates for decades,” Pence said, urging Congress to “reject the nomination” because Kennedy Jr. was “the most anti-abortion Republican health secretary in history.”

Ricciardi: ‘Now we are ready for anything’

“It’s hard to predict, naturally we’re ready for anything because hiring an anti-vaxer, someone who has completely anti-science positions to such a relaxed and important in a scientific power like the United States. the United States and I believe this could have an impact on a global level as well because this is the concept.

This was said by Walter Ricciardi, full professor of Hygiene at the Catholic University, referring to the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., by the US President-elect Trump, as head of the Department of Health of the Government in the United States.

In that role, Kennedy will “control the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health, the CDC”, affirms Ricciardi. “The consequences will be direct for the American public, but the importance of prestigious institutions like those, which manage billions of dollars in research funding, is also clear. the whole world is connected and we have seen this with the pandemic The main consequences will be on the United States but because they are a superpower, also on the rest of the world”, he said.